Corsair K68 RGB Mechanical Gaming Keyboard ReviewReview of the Corsair K68 RGB mechanical gaming keyboard with Cherry MX red switches, my first mechanical keyboard since IBM 5250 terminals.
After using several other gaming keyboards, is this the Corsair K68 the one that works for me?
Having used a variety of gaming keyboards, most recently the Logitech G213 which kept failing me, I decided to go for a premium gaming keyboard from one of the top makers. I already have a lot of Corsair peripherals including the HS70 Wireless headset and several Corsair cases into which I build my gaming PC.
This is my first mechanical keyboard since working with IBM 5250 terminals 20 odd years ago. I wanted the feel and accuracy of a mechanical keyboard, but not the click noise that went with it. Cherry MX switches seemed ideal as they do not click yet and are still mechanical.
Cherry Red switches are linear which means they have a constant motion. Brown and Blue have a tactile feel as they actuate and the blue switch also has a click. Cherry MX switches are good for gaming as they are quiet, quick and accurate. Brown is more suitable for typing as you get the actuation feedback.
Strait out the box you can feel the weight of this keyboard - it's not lightweight coming in at 1.4 kg! Nonetheless, this feels like a very solid and quality product.
This is a wired keyboard with 105 keys, per-key individual RGB backlighting and an IP32 rating meaning it should survive that coffee spill.
My first impressions of the keyboard are that the keys feel very slick. They have a much lighter actuation than I'm used to but similar to the keyboard on my Surface Book except with greater travel. There is no noise when typing unless you are heavy and the key cap touches the base. Having little feedback feels a little weird at first but I soon got used to the feeling.
The keyboard has a nice detachable wrist rest which is a little plasticky feel but solid, and the keyboard can be angled up using two feet on the back of the base. One thing I did notice is that the feet are not rubberised, so when you flip them down you lose the rubber grip on the base of the keyboard. There are rubber grips on the front and the wrist rest which provide some grip but I found that the back ones provide the best level of grip.
Out of the box, the keyboard fires up with a radial sweeping rainbow effect, which may be too much for someone not wanting to install the iCUE software. There is a backlight key along the top which toggles different lighting intensities and turns lighting off.
The top num pad area features keys to adjust the brightness of the lighting, and to turn it off, a Windows Lock key and the usual media control buttons. These can also all be rebound or assigned to macros functions like all the other keys. The only thing you can't customise is the colour of the lighting and lock buttons or the colour of the caps lock, scroll lock and num lock indicators.
One of the large criticisms of this keyboard in other online reviews is that the keys are a grease magnet and I half agree. The keys are a very fine matt effect which does show up grease if you look for it but you don't notice it unless you are specifically looking for it. I would not say that the keys are any more or less greasy than any other keyboard, it's just the way it looks in certain light.
Corsair K68 iCUE Drivers and Software
The Corsair iCUE software has just been updated to version 4, and in my opinion version 3 was better. The new version feels very clunky and not everything works as the previous version did, especially creating profiles and assigning key mapping or macros. It's kind of counterintuitive to assign them and it seems a bit random if it will save or not. Version 4 is also double the size of the previous version and comes in at 740MB (for a keyboard and mouse driver)
Software problems aside, the Corsair K68 is a pleasure to type and game with, I look forward to many hours of gaming and I'm sure I'll do a lot of writing and coding with ease as well. As I discover new features or problems I'll be updating this page but so far after a week of usage, I have only positive praise for this keyboard.
Update After A Year
After a year of using the Corsair K68 I can still only say positive things. It excels as a gaming keyboard and is quite pleasurable to type on whilst coding or content creation. The only negative thing I can say about this keyboard is that some of the removable keys can be accidentally flicked off when typing fast or during enthusiastic gaming.
Corsair K68 RGB Lighting Control without iCUE Software
Although limited, you can control RGB lighting without having iCUE installed.
The lighting key on the top row controls the intensity between Off, Low, Med and High brightness levels.
You can also hold the Fn key and press 1 - 0 and the minus key on the main number row (not the number keypad)
- Fn + 1 - Default Rotating Wheel effect in rainbow colours
- Fn + 2 - Randomised colours in rain effect
- Fn + 3 - RGB Waves from Right to Left
- Fn + 4 - Cylon wave effect bouncing left to right and back cycling RGB colours
- Fn + 5 - Lights up pressed key random colour then fades to off after a few seconds
- Fn + 6 - Ripples out from the pressed key in random colour
- Fn + 7 - All keys solid colour cycling through rainbow
- Fn + 8 - All keys solid colour fading out then changing to a new colour and fading in
- Fn + 9 - Random colour bands moving from left to right
- Fn + 0 - Disables lighting
- Fn + - - All keys solid colour, press multiple times to change colour
